Blog · Board and management reporting
Five sales dashboard examples, one for each reader who actually opens one: the chief executive, the sales director, the frontline manager, the rep, and sales operations. For each, this page lists the five or six tiles that belong, the comparison each tile needs to mean anything, the list each tile should click through to, and the tiles commonly included that should be removed. It also gives the four design rules that separate a dashboard that is used from one that is admired once.
One dashboard for everyone serves nobody. These are five, each for a reader with different decisions to make.
| Tile | Comparison | Clicks through to |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue and margin, month and year to date | Plan; same period last year | Bridge: volume, price, lost, new |
| Net and gross revenue retention, trailing 12 months | Last year | Cohorts; the accounts that contracted |
| Largest customer share; top ten share | Last year | Trend at each top account |
| Forecast for the quarter and year | Plan; last month's forecast; the range | Forecast track record |
| Top five named risks and opportunities | The account timeline |
Take off: pipeline by stage, activity, regional leaderboards. None is a chief executive's decision.
| Tile | Comparison | Clicks through to |
|---|---|---|
| Value coverage at cadence | Target; last month; by team | Uncovered accounts, ranked by value |
| Dormant accounts by prior-year value | Own history | The dormant list with owners |
| In-period pipeline coverage, aged removed | Required: one over measured win rate | Deals by rep; aged deals |
| Forecast against target, with per-rep bias | Target; track record | Category close rates per rep |
| Price realisation on new quotes and renewals | Last quarter | Discounts beyond approval |
| Accounts reassigned, not yet touched | Deadline by tier | The list |
Take off: total pipeline value with no requirement beside it; calls and meetings by team.
The director's measures, one row per rep.
| Rep | Value coverage | Dormant value in book | Coverage vs required | Forecast bias, 4 quarters | Deals with no next step | New accounts untouched |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 91% | $40,000 | 4.6x vs 4.0x | −2% | 1 | 0 |
| B | 68% | $310,000 | 5.2x vs 4.0x | +19% | 9 | 6 |
| C | 84% | $95,000 | 2.9x vs 4.0x | −11% | 2 | 1 |
This is a table, not tiles, because the manager's job is comparison across people. B has the most pipeline and the least attention on existing accounts, and forecasts a fifth too high. C is short of pipeline and sandbags. Each cell opens the rows behind it. This table is the agenda for the one-to-one; see the pipeline review template.
Take off: calls per day; the leaderboard by revenue, which mostly ranks the books reps were given.
Lists, with at most one line of numbers above them: revenue against target, and coverage of my book.
| List | Rule | Rows |
|---|---|---|
| Call this week | My accounts overdue a touch for their tier, or past their own order pattern, by value | Top 15 |
| Grow | My accounts buying less than similar customers, by valued gap | Top 10 |
| Deals needing a next step | My open deals with no dated next step, or aged in stage | All |
| Renewals and contract ends | Next 180 days, with usage or order trend | All |
| New to me | Accounts assigned in the last 30 days, not yet contacted | All |
Every row carries the reason it is there. See why the list gets worked and the dashboard gets glanced at.
Take off: nearly everything else. A rep does not need a gauge.
| Tile | Comparison | Clicks through to |
|---|---|---|
| Report revenue against finance ledger | Difference, and what explains it | Reconciling items |
| Accounts with no owner; accounts with two | Should be zero | The accounts |
| Suspected duplicate customers | Last month | Pairs to review |
| Required fields complete: close date, stage, segment, tier, contact | By rep; last month | Records missing each |
| Open deals with close date in the past | Should be zero | The deals, by rep |
| Activity logged against accounts not in the master | Should be zero | The orphan activity |
Every other dashboard rests on this one. If owners are missing or totals do not tie, the director's tiles are wrong in ways nobody can see. The CRM data quality scorecard covers the per-rep version.
| Tile | Why it goes |
|---|---|
| Calls, emails, meetings: counts | Effort, not outcome; predicts little; invites gaming |
| Total pipeline value | Meaningless without in-period, aged-removed and required |
| Revenue this month against last month | Mostly the calendar; use same period last year |
| Average deal size, alone | Interesting; nobody acts on it |
| Leaderboard by revenue | Ranks territories, not people |
| Pie charts of revenue by region or product | The same every month |
| Gauges and speedometers | One number using the space of six |
| Win rate with no stage or basis | Not comparable to itself next quarter |
Built for everyone. Thirty tiles; each reader uses three and cannot find them.
No comparison. 78 percent. Of what, against what?
No click-through. The reader sees a problem and has to ask an analyst which accounts.
New business only. No tile about existing accounts, where the revenue is.
Built on data nobody checks. The sales operations dashboard does not exist, so the others drift from the truth.
One reader, five or six tiles, a comparison on each, rows behind each, and nothing on it that nobody would act on. Executives get outcomes and named risks, directors get coverage and forecast quality, managers get a per-rep table, reps get lists, and operations gets data quality. For the difference between the forms, see dashboard versus report versus list. Covirage computes the measures behind all five from the exports a business already has, and delivers each reader their own view with the rows one click away.
Five or six for the first view. People can hold about that many numbers in mind, and each additional tile lowers the attention the important ones get. More detail belongs one click down, reached from the tile it explains, not alongside it.
The one that makes it interpretable: against plan for revenue, against the same period last year for anything seasonal, against the required level for coverage, against its own trailing history for rates. A number with no comparison forces the reader to remember last time, and they will not.
Because a dashboard tells a rep how they are doing, which they already know, and not what to do next, which is what they need. Give reps ranked lists with a reason on each row. They will use those daily and ignore the tiles, which is the right way round.